October 16, 2016

My SPACE 1889 kick was started when I bought a Crossover Miniatures Omura class airship. It’s a 28mm laser-cut MDF ‘not-a-Hullcutter’ and is pretty darn big, with room for a lot of crew.

It also needs a lot of artillery for the deck, with various long and short guns, and a massive Lob Gun amidship.

The Lob Gun (above) is an ECW mortar from RENEGADE. It’s a lovely piece, and comes with huge cannonballs and a powder charge.(Plus an ECW crew, of course)

The Master Gunner is converted from a Wood Elf archer, and the assistant is converted from the open-handed Elf. All figures are from Forlorn Hope Games.

All other gunners are also made from the same open-handed Elf, with slow matches and rammers added from wire.

The guns are from the Irregular Miniatures Pirates range: There are three different barrels, but all carriages are the same. Each gun comes in four parts: Barrel, carriage, and two very tiny trunnion straps.

As it happens, I needed three different rates of cannon, so they were perfect.

The rammers are made from a piece of wire. One end has a brush made from crochet cotton wrapped around the end and hardened with cyano adhesive. The other end has a block made from a strip of paper wrapped around the shaft and hardened with cyano.

The slow match is a fine wire wrapped around a heavier wire. I made a prototype y-shaped linstock, but it looked too high-tech to me. I wanted more primitive gunnery for my Martians.

I went for a dark grey-blue uniform because gunnery is a dirty business, and this shade won’t show the grime so much.

This gun is on a prototype deck base. It’s about the right size, but the final bases will be planked rather than a plain square of wood.

If worst comes to worst, they make a fairly worthwhile battery for a fortress.

October 6, 2016

These are Irregular Miniatures Celts, the three Command figures plus some of the variants of IP29 and IP30. They provide a nice 15-figure General and bodyguard unit.

.

These are the Command figures (IP40 a, b, c), unmodified except for replacing the standard shaft with wire.

The spearmen come with open hands for the wire spears supplied.

I have heard Irregular described as ‘Old School’ wargaming figures, and I suppose they are. But Irregular was providing codes with head, equipment, and pose variations long before it became fashionable.

It’s actually nice to see figures that aren’t waving their arms about pointlessly: They fit on their bases and rank up nicely.